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I Believe ... The Father Almighty
Mark 14;32-d42
March 9, 1969

Once a week, every Sunday, we stand together and confess our common faith
in the words of the Apostles' Creed. We say "I believe in God the Father Almighty”
Many of us have done it for years with monotonous regularity and one of the by-
products of this ritualistic regularity has been a loss of whatever the words once
were intended to mean. That is, what was once a meaningful ritual has become a
meaningless procedure with no connection whatever with the realities of our daily
living. What does it mean to confess belief in 2 God who is an Almighty Father?

n one evening last week I was involved in two experiences - just an hour

one of which strongly confirmed ond witnessed to the Almighty Fatherhood of
God; the™other one of which seemed to utterly and totally destroy it. Let me
explain. Before I left home for an 8:00 o'clock meeting, I attended to one of the
pleasant duties of my own fatherhood - the bedtime ritual of two sleepy little boys.
They had made small prayer books in their Church School Cl ss, and part of the ritual
is to get those books out and say the prayer which they valida memorized. One
of them concludes scmething like this, ". . » and God will watch and care for me.
Thank you God. Amen.” It's a mighty affirmation which I believe more deeply in
that moment than at any cther time, Two sleepy little boys, clean, well fed,
content, secure. As they say their prayers it's not difficult 2 all to believe
in God the Father Alm yhty.

But the evening wes not over. As I left the meeting on the South Side,

a young boy about seven years old darted out into the street and was hit by a
passing car. I was the first cne to him. Crumpled, motionless in the unnecessary
filth of South Third Strect, dirty clothes - as I leaned over him I saw the two
at home: "And God will.wetch and care for me. Thank you, God." What about this
one? Thanks for wna His uncaring mother had be ordered by the police to
accompany him to the hospital in the ambulance. Ge God an Almighty Father only
to clean ite, middle class boys? at about this little boy?

That, I believe, is the issug}contained in the rote, weekly affirmation.
"IT believe in God the Father Almighty." {ina I think every one of us has confronted
that issue at some time, in some form in our own lives. Perhaps the war in Viet
Nam, perhaps the millions of starving children in the world, perhaps the premature
loss of someone very dear, perhaps the endless succession of monotonous days,
devoid of joy ond grace - leading nowhere. What does it mean - in the mid of
life's torrible ambiguities - to believe in a God who is an Almighty rotnoged

The whole idea that God can be described as a father - in terms 0
fatherhood ~ is 4 uniquely Christian contribution. It is not necessarily logical;
it is not the natural conclusion of a man who observes the world and other men and
attempts to articulate a theology. The Greeks tried that and came up with a whole
group of gods that acted pretty much like men. A typical Greek god was Prometheus —-
perhaps you know the story. Men had not yet discovered fire and without it were
living in cold, damp discomfort. Prometheus, however, was a sympathetic god and
decided to steal fire from the realm of heaven and give it to men. This he did,
to the chagrin of Zeus, the father of all tho gods. As punishment for his ill-
advised behavior Zeus clunined ~cometheus to a rock in the middle of the ocean,
and arranged for two vultures to tesr out his liver which would grow again only
to be torn out, over and over

The gods of the Grecks acted like men, quarrelling among themselves,
arbitrarily punishing and rewarding mortals according to the whim of the
moment. For the most part they were withdrawn from and totally indifferent to
the affairs of humanity.

Greek philosopny, on the other hand, conceived of God as an abstract
idea. Plato, one of the greatest thinkers of all times, broke through the poly-
theism of his countrymen and taught that the ultimate reality of the unverse
wos a unity. There was one god, but the great philosopher could press his cage
no further than identifying God with the highest good. God rcm-ined an abstraction.

It is in the Old Testament, our own Judaic heritage that the word Father
is whispered as the appropraite description of God. In the middle of the Pentateuch

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wo read: ". . . Is he not your father who created you, who made you and established S
you?" (deut. 32:6) In the book of the prophet Jeremiah (3:19) we find: "I am

a Fathcr to Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born." In th days of monarchy Israel's
King was regarded as God's son. God's promise to David about Solomon was, "I

will be his father, ond he shill be my son." (2 Sam. 7:14)

But it remains ao whisper in the Old Testament. God the father is primarily
Jehovah (or Jahweh) who is totally other than man. His authority and power can
be compared to a potter with a lump of shapeless clay in his hand. God is a father
to be sure, but the idea is still a whisper.

Now, when we use the term father, we need to be clear that we ure talking
about at least two different concepts. The first may be called paternity. In this
sonse 2 man fathers his children: he is their progenitor, their creator, responsib..
for the fnct that they have life. This idea has existed for centuries in many
different religions. God is father in that he is the source of life — the creator.
There is nothing uniquely Christian about that. And of course the idea does not
include a personal relationship of amy sort any more than the biological relation—
ship resulting from conception always results in a relationship between father and
child. Unhappily that is not always the vesult .= outside of marriage - and within
marriage as well,

The second idea a¢ds a quality of personal relationship to the fact of
biological relatedness -- aud this we may call fatherhood as opposed to paternity.
This is what the Cheistson faith has always intended when it calls God father.
Certainly ho is our creator uxt shere is more to his fatherhood than that. There

is a relationship, a very perzoaal, intimate relationship between the creator and
the create? ; 2 loving, caring. responsible relationship of fatherhood ond sonship.
That is distinctly and un’cucly Christian.

Now where dia wo got it?” We got it from one who addressed God as his
father - from Jesus Christ. As Christians, thinking about the fatherhoo? °* 7°
we are compelled to start here -- with him - with the meaning and implications
of his otionship witha God.

eae called God father many times. He taught his disciples to pray
“Our Father. . ." But nowhere did he refer to God as his father more movingly
chan in the Garden of Gethscmane. Nowhore is there an occasion which better
illustrates what it means for any man to address God as father. Josus had boon
batrayed: he had eaten his last meal with his friends: the coalition against him
were, at that moment, searching for him in order to bring him to trial. It was
. one way street and he mew it. At the end there would be humiliation, degradation
public failure, tortyre and death. Ee said to his closest friends, "My soul is

ery sorrowful, cvon to death: remain here and watch." And then in this terrible,
agoniging moment le prayed: "Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee: remevo
ovp from mo: yet aot what I will, but what thou wilt." It is interesting

that the Aramaic “Abba” is not translated. It is a term of deep intimacy: it
indicates 2 close, loving relationship: it was the term used by little children in
the family circle: the only equivalent we have is "Daddy" "Father" — “My father’
another version translates it.

We must go to Gethsemane, [ believe, if we want to understand the
Fatherhood of God. Tor there we see the same issue raised by the little boy
hit by a car -- or “oe deg the terrible trageties which daily call into question

the very existence of Gg.) Jaras Sxart has noted that whon we call God "the
Father Almighty". wo ucvally mesn that he is in "exclusive control of the
heavenly buttons," That is. if he were an Almighty Father he wouldn't let things
like that heppen to his initccont children, That's the real issue, isn't it. That's
the qu: ction thal haunts vs on2 bothers us and perhaps tortures us.

& G-thsemane Josus asked his father to remove him for the situation in
which he found himself. And his father — apparently did nothing. But there are

limitations on fatherhooc, are there not? If a man is going to be a father to his
children he will not be a dictator: he will not pretond to determine their every
decision: he will not try to protect them forever from exposure to the risks of
life. Rather fatherhood is the loving but painful task of granting freedom;
nurturing, teaching, supporting, and one day cutting loose. And that final freedag -
the act of locsing the. strings is the most difficult but most loving part of alls)

=
+ another way, the Almighty Fatherhood of God is not a mechanical powor
that works to protect his children from harm. Rather it is a relationship that is
broken by nothing: an intimate loving fatherhood that was with Jesus as he faced his
cross - and which accompanies you and me and little boys hit by cars and grown men
dying of cancer. It is a fatherhood of relationship that weeps when we weep — a
love that is injured when we are hurt - a presence that laughs when we have reason
for joy. It is a power far more profound than the mechanical arranging of events
to protect and shield us. Gethsemane teaches us that

(What does it moan to call God Father? It means all of that and much more.
It means for instance, that we are all brothers - not only by creation, but beer?
of our common father's love for ug.) Here the doctrine takes on its inevi table mor
implications. (You can't call God father and hate another man, no matter who he esd
The beautiful simplicity of that imperative was seen clearly by the early Christians
One of them wrote," If a man says he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar."
(John 4:20) It's as simple as that, and yet Christians seem unanimously intent
on ignoring it. Inercdibly there geome to be no relationship between "I believe
in God the Father" and the worst_form of bigotry ond racial prejudice. In fact,
the latter negates the former. Piers is no belief in God the father that does
not include a new relationship with my neighbor,)

{ine dignity and worth of the individual, so threatened today and at many
times in history, is defended ultimately here — here where we affirm the fatherhood
of God,| Leslie Newbigin tells how Adolf Hitler sent men to the famous Bethel
Hspital to inform Pastor Bodelschwingh, its director, that the State could no longer
afford to maintain hundreds of epileptics who were useless to society and only
constituted a drain on scarce resources, and that orders had been issued to have
them destroyed. Bodelschwingh confronted them in his room at the entrance to the
hospital and fought a spiritual battle which eventually sent them away without
having done what they were sent to do. He had no other weapon for that battle than
the ‘a ue affirmation that these were men and women made in the image of God.."

~ Of course, “there were “ni liione for whom the battle was lost - but here
is the final bastion. Here is the only final rationale for the still radical
idea that evory man is a person of dignity and worth and individuality. That's
what it means to believe in a Father God.
There is much more, so much in fact, that it is presumptuous to attempt
to cover it in one sermon. Forgiveness, love - these are words that have meaning for
the Christian who believes in God the Father. Acceptance, comfort, ultimate ec~

\There is one final idea, however, without which any work on God's fathers. -
could not stand. That is, our Father God seeks us out until he find us; thatkis
power over us is not mechanical coercion -— but the power of an eternal love:
that this love - this fatherhood is Almighty.) It is an idea expressed in the
parable of the Shepherd who seeks the one lost sheep wntil he finds it: or the
widow looking for .thcone lost coin. It is echoed in the beautiful 139th
Psalm, part of which we read together this morning. :"Whither shall I go from
thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into
heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If TI
take the wings of the morning, ond dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even
there shal] thy hand lend me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

Cine Father seeks us ~ in mny ways. He seeks us because he loves us and
his Almightiness means that the search knows no end. Not even death separates us
from the pursuing love of Gox We The Confession of 1967 reads: "God's sovereign
love is a mystery boycnd the vonch of man's mind." | St. Augustine, centuries /
ago, observed: "God loves cach one of us as if there was only one of us to
love." Jesus said simply, "Father".

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